Improving communication skills

What went well? What could have been improved?

The headteacher's view

This project was a challenge to set up, mainly because we were aiming to gain concrete evidence for something that we all believed in -- that the arts play a crucial role in all-round education. The difficulty was in finding ways to see the impact of the arts, rather than just the impact of teaching styles. As we have considerable expertise in the arts and share a belief in their importance, identifying specific targets for the discrete curriculum areas was not hard.

Having clear outcomes to look for helped us to focus the project. However, it was important to recognise the need to change these outcomes as the project progressed. For example, it became clear that recording the raising of hands was an inadequate measure of pupils' willingness to answer questions. Pupils would often only respond if they felt they might get a chance to answer -- it did not indicate whether they had gained any knowledge and wanted to share it! We went on to look much more closely at how pupils interacted with adults and peers, which shifted the focus to the quality of response.

It was essential to plan carefully before this project, as the initial interviews provided the comparative data to judge its success. Videoing the interviews enabled us to measure factors such as the length of time that pupils spoke and the complexity of their responses. When the final interviews were evaluated, it was clear that the balance of teacher talk to pupil response had shifted significantly. The pupils had far more to say for themselves and needed much less prompting.

We began by monitoring all three classes, but this stretched our resources too far. We also found that it was difficult to remove the effect of teaching style and personality from the equation, although having just one researcher meant that it was possible to monitor the quality and style of delivery, as well as pupils' progress. In the end, the researcher focused on just one class and this formed the basis of her report.

Initially, we focused on the use of language when collecting evidence. However, as the project progressed, staff identified a range of interesting effects of the work (often in anecdotal form). These were collected together and strengthened our belief in the effectiveness of the approach.

We were fairly pleased with the progress the pupils made across all areas of the curriculum during the project. Obviously, in some cases individual lessons could have gone better and we would have liked more time. However, having an end point (the performance) gave the project a real focus.

Tudor life was a common focus for all the arts work and enabled pupils to make links between the different experiences. Using actors as the descendants of a Tudor family brought the project to life. They felt a real purpose in researching artefacts, finding out about life in Tudor times and piecing together fragments of information about the Tarlton family. They also had a real desire to write an effective play.

Both pupils and staff were enthusiastic about the project throughout. We built up an excellent team spirit and the use of actors and curators enhanced the project (they also enjoyed and valued the approach). The only problems we encountered were lack of time and money -- we would like to have provided replica Tudor costumes and instruments!

This project had a profound effect on the way teachers now teach history topics and made a unique contribution to pupils' education. Because learning through the arts involved them exploring, creating, displaying and performing, they became much more motivated to learn.

We aim to do one project like this for each year group during the school year. We believe that all children deserve a broad and varied education, and have a right to an approach that focuses on the child and values their individuality. A project like this enables all children to experience success and builds up their self-esteem.

Through a cross-curricular approach with an arts focus, children can make connections between all the learning they experience in primary school and develop the tools they need to communicate with both their peers and adults effectively.